about Rick Miller

RICK MILLER is a Dora and Gemini award-winning writer/performer based in Toronto, Canada.  He trained in Montreal as an architect, actor, musician, playwright and visual artist, and has performed in five languages on five continents. For 3 years, Rick hosted ABC’s hit primetime series “Just for Laughs”, and Entertainment Weekly has called him “one of the 100 most creative people alive today”.  As artistic producer  of WYRD Productions, an internationally-acclaimed company devoted to multi-disciplinary theatre, he has created and performed shows such as Art?, Slightly Bent, Into the Ring (co-created with Dawson Nichols), and the worldwide hit MacHomer.  Two recent WYRD Productions have been co-creations with director Daniel Brooks and Necessary Angel Theatre Company: Bigger Than Jesus and HARDSELL, which Rick recently reworked as HARDSELL 2.0.  He is also a frequent collaborator with renowned director Robert Lepage, having worked on such plays as La Géométrie des Miracles, Zulu Time (co-created with Peter Gabriel), on the film Possible Worlds, and on the 9-hour play Lipsynch. He is also involved in several educational, environmental, and youth-empowerment initiatives. Here are some of the projects Rick and WYRD are touring and/or developing:

o   MacHomer:  17 years, 165 cities, 850+ performances, over 500 000 fans! Few solo shows have enjoyed the runaway success of Rick Miller’s MacHomer, a hilarious mash-up of “the Simpsons” and Macbeth. The tour is now officially OVER, but the show is still available on DVD (Order here) and for schools, we now have downloadable outreach modules to help teach Shakespeare, available at animatedshakespeare.ca.

o   Bigger Than Jesus:  Miller and Daniel Brooks' "sinfully funny" multimedia mass has become an international success story, playing in 6 countries and 4 languages. Jesus recently completed its 9 year tour in Quebec City at Théâtre Périscope, but WYRD Productions has begun negotiating with Rhombus media to 'resurrect' BTJ onscreen. Stay tuned, and visit BiggerThanJ.com

o   HARDSELL 2.0:  Miller’s recent reworking of the Miller/Brooks play at Factory Theatre has pushed it into exciting new directions: a French-language premiere at Festival Le Carrefour in June 2012, a BravoFact! short film with Toronto’s Foundry Films (which will hopefully lead to the development of a new satirical TV series.), and an in-school information literacy program that premiered in Jan 2012. Check out the recent 3-minute and 10-minute YouTube videos, plus the video of Rick's IdeaCity performance in Toronto in June 2011.

o   LIPSYNCH:  Robert Lepage, Rick Miller and 8 other actor/writers from around the world have created this monumental 9-hour production that has toured Canada, the USA, the UK, France, Spain, Australia, Russia, Austria, Italy and Taiwan.

In development:

o   BOOM:  Part explosive performance, part riveting documentary and part nostalgia trip, this solo show features Miller in a tour-de-force performance that captures and recreates the defining moments of the baby boom era (1945-67). The play was initially commissioned by the Stratford Festival, is being workshopped at Ex Machina in Quebec City, and will premiere in Jan 2014 in Calgary at the High Performance Rodeo (presented by Theatre Calgary). BOOM is part of a larger transmedia project that aims to bring history to the next generation of Canadians.

o   The 20K Project:  Jules Verne's classic adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea is being re-imagined for the 21st Century. Miller and Craig Francis will lead a collective of talented multi-disciplinary artists from across Canada and around the world in the creation of an amazing piece of multimedia theatre. As with BOOM, the play is only one component of a larger network of transmedia properties each with a focus on empowering youth to act on water issues.  Commissioned by and premiering at the Toronto 2015 Pan-Am Games, 20K will tour the world thereafter.

o   MONEY:  A multi-disciplinary ensemble piece exploring the concept of money.  Drawing from his many collective collaborations with Robert Lepage, Miller will lead a multi-talented cast of writer/performers to create an original play themed on money:  what it is, what we do for it and what it does to us.  Development will continue into 2014 and 2015.      

Rick is one of Canada’s most respected multi-disciplinary performers, with credits ranging from classical theatre to the avant-garde, from musicals to live comedy, from voice work to film & television. He has been called “one of Canada’s most dazzling performers” (Toronto Star), and the “most virtuosic voice in the country” (Edmonton Journal). He recently starred as Brian Mulroney in the satirical film Mulroney: The Opera and hosted a TV doc series called Canadian Made. Rick’s many voices can be heard in hit cartoons such as My Big Big Friend (Bongo), Skatoony (Hedley-Diddly-Dee), Atomic Betty (Sparky), and Magi-Nation (Orwin, Freep, Ashio). He lives in Toronto with his wife Stephanie Baptist and their 2 daughters.